The Land, the Crow, the Wind
By K. Overman-Edmiston
Copyright 2011 K. Overman-Edmiston
All rights reserved.
Published by Crumplestone Press at Smashwords.
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The Land, the Crow, the Wind is from the short story collection Night Flight from Marabar.
Paperback print edition (ISBN 9780646369693) published by Crumplestone Press
PO Box 6546, East Perth
Western Australia 6892
** ** **
The Land, the Crow, the Wind.
The Irish Famine
THE LAND
It is the deepest pitch of night, the quiet point where one heartbeat barely makes it to the next. The most restful place this side of death. Some who relax into sleep tonight will not awake tomorrow. Now is the only peace. Daylight will bring back sentience, and the hunger will return with teeth. Hunger will again become the axis around which my coastlines, my mountains and lakes will revolve; a slow, dizzying swing.
I am the land. And my people starve.
Imagine how it feels to watch your own children hunger and fail. I, who was such a provider, a life-force to generation after generation from time immemorial, now watch my children die. The moss of my own hills opens up in great suppurating sores. My produce is rotting within me – now I am fit only to receive the corpses of my young ones – babies, children, men and women in their prime, old men, ancient women, all taken before their time. A death by starvation is always a premature death. Robbed of food, starved of life, my people are thrown back at my bones. A fine homecoming.
These are the times bile rises in my belly; these are the times hunger splits the skies.
I am the land, and I have become a grave to my own children.
THE CROW
Never have I been so sleek. My plumage a midnight black, a sheen of stars, testament to a time of plenty. How the tables are turned. I – who was once a scavenger, grateful for crumbs – am now king. There is not a valley or plain upon which I turn my eye that does not yield up food. Flesh, carrion, wherever I alight, and not a man with the energy to brush me away.
I am blessed among the generations of my kind. Never has there been such an abundance for me and mine. These are the years of the crow. No generation before me has lived in such an age of feast and none, I prophesy, shall hereafter. Mine has been the cry of the parasite, desperate for morsels to carry back to the nest. Desperate in the knowledge that my success or failure will mean the survival – or not – of my offspring. But now? Now, I could feed the next twelve generations of my kind, and still remain sleek.
What is the argument, the lesson for me and mine? In times of plenty I am chased from the table, in times of dearth I am chased from the table. Despite there being a mouthful for every creature that lives. Consider the lilies …
When a creature has enough he wants more, when he has too much he still wants more. Pestilence does not cause famine, disease does not empty the larder. Greed empties bellies, indifference means they stay empty. On this island there is famine, on the next there is feast. Between the two there is enough to go around. Greed, indifference keep the larder door shut.
Yesterday I was knave, today I am king. Can a knave deliver a homily, can a scavenger offer up food for thought? Well, if so, let me put to you …
As king, I sit at the head of the table. But I am king of an inverted order. When the previous order reasserts itself, and it will, I will swap zenith for nadir. Once again I will hop under the table searching for crumbs. Is there anything to learn from this fall to misery? Am I really a king in knave’s clothing? Am I now where I should always have been? Will I never again be hungry?
No. The only lesson is that misery will hold sway until there is a place at the table for all. Let us govern our own lands, let us sing our native songs, let us determine the warp and weft of our own culture.
Allow us all a place at the table. Then, and only then will famine and misery be outfaced.
So ends the homily of the crow.
THE WIND
I am not simply the elemental force that sweeps across the land, the mass that drives the ocean upon the shore, that casts the rain before the storm. I am also the thin, reedy cry from spent lungs, the sob thrown through young reeds. I have become a wind of groans, a keening wind. All I have carried is the hoarse whisper of death.
It is not long since I bounced the squeals of playing children around the loughs and turloughs, or caressed the low moans of those engaged in life-making deep within lamplit cottages. Now my movement serves only to carry away the last testament from dead men’s lips. Gone is the time when I would rustle the stalks and leaves in the fields, ruffle the hair of those who worked these fields. Now I pluck up stench and throw it at the skies. Rotting vegetation, rotting flesh. It has all become one, and I have been reduced to aery pallbearer.
Silenced is the singing, extinguished is the breath through uilleann pipes. In its place a cry. A death rattle born of starvation, thrown from the land, glanced off the wing of a crow and taken up into folds of the wind. The keening has been swept across this green, savage land, thrown up towards the heavens and left to fall, unanswered, upon the hills and valleys as rain.
But I tell you this now, take heed of the wind. I shall drive hope before me, cleansing, replenishing. I shall wipe away all tears, I shall dry all eyes. I will sweep hope through this country with such a sweetness. Drive hope through the valleys and upon all hills. I will sustain my people. I will rain hope like manna from the heavens.
I will raze despair from the plains and fan the flames of survival. My people will overcome, they will prevail – stronger, deeper, more resourceful.
I am the wind. I will bring hope. And there will be an end to the hunger.
***
About the Author
Karen Overman-Edmiston
People’s motivations and their interior life are at the core of Karen Overman-Edmiston’s writing. In addition, impressions and experiences gained while travelling have had a strong impact on her work. These factors are strongly evident in the novel, The Avenue of Eternal Tranquillity, as well as in an earlier publication, Night Flight from Marabar, a collection of short stories. Both titles are available in bookshops and online.
Karen Overman-Edmiston was born in the United Kingdom. Educated in the U K, Ireland and Australia, she gained a Master of Arts at the University of Western Australia. Having previously worked for the West Australian government, Karen runs her own consultancy business as well as continuing her writing.
Karen has written for the stage and has had competition-winning plays performed, including at the Festival of Perth. She is also a prize-winning short story writer who has had stories published in several magazines.
Find out more on the publisher’s website: http://sites.google.com/site/crumplestonepress/